Loving John Watson
by Spark Writer
Summary: You discover early on that you want him. Maybe even the very day you meet.


You discover early on that you want John Watson.

Maybe even the very day you meet.

John squeezes the trigger, and both you and the cabbie are struck, though in vastly different ways.

The cabbie loses his life.

You lose your barricade.

It falls like a cliff into the sea, letting sunlight in at last, but also other things; dark, twisted realities, a superfluity of sobering truths, foul demons you've spent your life evading.

When the wall goes down, you become vulnerable to everything. The good. The evil. John.

All the while your doctor stands patiently behind the yellow crime tape and you, wrapped in a hideous orange blanket, lock eyes with him and feel a desperate tingle lick the length of your spine and ignite in your belly. Your heart does a 360 degree spin in your chest, pumps blood at a frenetic pace.

John smiles, barely enough to notice. You do. And you think: this man is a blazing dichotomy, healer and slayer clad in a questionable jumper, he is my order, I need him, I will not, _cannot,_ fuck this up.

...

You fuck it up anyway.

...

You tell John to fetch you things, snap at him when he scrubs the porcelain bathtub free of mould before your cultures have matured, [accidentally] contaminate his food with E. coli, call him dull; idiot; tedious; boring; intolerable, risk your neck chasing after rapists and killers and felons in London's light-shot darkness, roar profanity at John for pulling you bodily from the Thames just as you are about to track a murderer, drape yourself over the sofa in the sitting room and poke John's upper thigh repeatedly until he stops pecking about on his blog and starts paying attention to _you_, barge into the bathroom while John's having a piss to explain the evolution of Icelandic lichen, scorch his best cardigan while trying to light a fire in the goddamn grate, go out without telling a soul and don't return for hours at a time, are caught playing with your 7% solution and nearly throttled, invade John's personal space with alarming frequency, and verbally abuse his parade of girlfriends at every opportunity.

You are absolute chaos and he is absolute radiance and he steals your breath away. The two of you, a pair of glorious avenging angels, pounding racing rushing through a labyrinth of alleys and avenues, wind lifting the hair from your forehead, gun in hand, wool at your neck, comets in your eyes and lightning in your gut—you catch criminals and laugh too loud after while the feeling swells like a tumor in your belly, fierce and glittering. An ache, a need, a pull toward the man ever at your side.

And then: John wrapped in Semtex, looking like a crime scene with his impossible blue eyes and hair mussed from a struggle and dear old Jim slinking out of the shadows saying, "I will burn the _heart_ of out you."

"I have been reliably informed I don't have one," you reply, gripping the Browning.

"But we both know that's not quite true."

You look at John.

...

Later, you rip the explosives from his body. The mind palace is completely submerged.

"Sherlock," he pants, "_Sherlock_."

It's merely a vibration of vocal cords, but you can't help thinking that if there was one sound you would like to fall asleep to, live to, die to, it would be this; the sound of your name in his mouth. That is also when you realise how well and truly fucked you are.

You do not. [you]

You won't. [love]

You can't. [him]

It's impossible.

So you carry on as always. Your feelings are disposed of in an ebony box which you slide beneath the bed in your mind palace's second bedroom.

You solve mysteries. John blogs. You play the violin for him: Paganini, Tchaikovsky, Mozart. He thinks it's to annoy the British government. You let him.

Enter The Woman.

Pale contours and a mind as sharp as your own. First you despise her, then you adore her, then she wants to fuck you, then you are disgusted. She is not John. Tartan button down and sturdy shoes sitting across the table from you as make your deductions, as Irene murmurs "impress a girl," as you discover the missing piece in a blinding burst of ingenuity that leaves everyone in the room breathless. But you more than anyone, because John is staring open-mouthed, like you're a stellar explosion. You do it for him, not The Woman, never The Woman.

Does he not realise…?

He does not.

You do your best not to bemoan the state of affairs [what did you expect of him? He's an ordinary person, an idiot].

You have never experienced this before, thus you have no idea how to proceed. You're utterly out of your depth. Composing dismal string pieces, spilling acid on John's cheap crime novels and reading a book about the future of bees seems to alleviate the discomfort somewhat. You return to a vaguely acceptable stasis.

You don't notice John has stopped dating.

...

Baskerville is the case that brings you to your knees. Sherlock Holmes gets scared. You cannot trust the evidence of your own eyes.

You are rude and abrasive to John. He leaves. Later, you tell him he's your conductor of light; he stimulates the genius in you.

He forgives you.

The case resolves itself in a fiery melee of fearful exhilaration, and you bring him coffee the next morning while thin English sunshine burns down on you both.

That is the Last Good Day.

...

Then Moriarty sweeps into your lives like a toxic hurricane; round two of the war you and the perverse criminal have been fighting since boyhood.

Everything you have with John becomes strained, touched with Jim's poison, and you resent it with all your being.

You are arrested for being a fake.

John joins you moments later, in handcuffs, and he looks fucking edible. The two of you escape, hot on Jim's tale, determined to set things right.

When you see him next he introduces himself as Richard Brooks and you consider vomiting. John's consternation goes through you like a blade.

You plan your death.

The last time you see John he is angry at you [how absurdly accurate].

Next you are on the rooftop of the hospital with a fragmented heart and numb fingers and you love him, you love him, fuck.

"Goodbye, John."

Later, he stands at your grave and says things. Like, "You were the best and wisest man I've ever known and I owe you so much."

Your throat constricts and the sudden moistness about your eyes cannot be attributed to wind.

You leave.

But you don't stop.

The ache, the desire, struggle to beat their way out the box, no longer willing to stay under lock and key.

"Be careful," says Mycroft.

"Fuck off," you reply. Mortification pervades your entire being; Mrs Hudson knows, the British Government knows, everyone knows.

John doesn't know.

You stay alive so you can tell him.

...

You don't imagine the next time you see him you will be dressed as a Parisian waiter and he will have the most ghastly mustache adorning his upper lip and a blonde, laughing woman will be sat opposite, sending your heart to your toes. But this is precisely what happens.

You hates you. You can't blame him.

Then he is drugged and set ablaze on Guy Fawkes day and the universe rearranges itself, you shove your way through the bystanders screaming his name and pull him from the inferno at a speed you would once have thought inhuman [but that's you all over, isn't it].

The thing you notice first isn't the menacing burns on his face and hands or the way he cannot seem to draw breath, but that he no longer has a mustache. He shaved it off.

For you.

Oh.

After that he seems to forgive you. You go on your frankly ridiculous adventures again, Hatman and Robin, the detective and the blogger, the avenging angels, Sherlock and John.

He tells you you're his best friend. There is thunder in your chest and explosions in your ears and John looks like the Afghani desert at high noon. He asks you to be his best man. You agree.

The stag night is intoxicating in ways that have nothing to do with alcohol. John palms your knee, says "I don't mind."

"Anytime," you reply and mean it.

Then there is the wedding. Major Sholto is dreadful, Mary is _dreadful. _You give your speech with a blooming heart and because you hold honesty to high esteem you do not hold back, you profess your feelings and your [human error] to the guests and they regard you with tender faces and sparkling tears. John rises from his seat and puts his arms around you. For a moment you are burning alive and it is stunning, the loveliest, John.

You leave early.

...

CAM is a vile but effective distraction and at least it means you get to recruit your doctor. His reaction to your romancing Janine plants a feral stab of hope in your chest. Jealousy, obvious enough for anyone to detect.

It makes John more beautiful. Your stomach swoops, skin thrums, faces flushes; you think of kissing him.

In fact, you are still thinking of kissing him when his wife shoots you through the torso that night, and you fall.

You are aware the blanket of final darkness has come for you, and are ready to die, but that is when Jim Moriarty says something paralyzing: "John Watson is definitely in danger."

You live again, you stay alive, you do it for him, just like before.

And later, when the bullet wound has healed and the truth been disclosed and John taken up residence in 221B again, you consider telling him.

You consider telling him you are miraculously fucking head over heels for him. You don't.

He doesn't look at Mary's USB stick.

Eventually he makes the decision to reconcile with her. You wish for another bullet, anything to outmatch the pain you are feeling now.

It is the worst Christmas you've ever had, but then you slip sleeping pills into everyone's drinks and sneak off with John to Appledore, to Charles Augustus Magnussen.

Only when Magnussen begins flicking John just beneath his _shatteringly_ blue eyes do you lose your composure. Hatred coils in your gut and your hands shake and you cannot watch. It's too agonizing, torturous, unbearable. You reach carefully into the pocket of John's coat and extract the gun, bellow at John to move back, away, where he will not be harmed. You squeeze the trigger. CAM drops like a puppet with cut strings.

"_Christ_, Sherlock!"

You're on your knees, hands up, looking back over your shoulder at your conductor of light. He's horrified and so are you, suddenly, realising the gravity of what you've just done. Everything is insanely loud and you can't get enough oxygen in your lungs, and all thought vanishes into the whiteness.

Didn't solve the murder, did you? No.

You saved the life.

John Watson would be proud.

Except he isn't.

...

You nearly say what it is you've been meaning to say all along. You look down at John, sandy hair all ruffled by the [east] wind sweeping along the tarmac, eyes soft and dim like drops of blue glass, lips pressed tight. You open your mouth and say instead the only thing you are brave enough to say.

"Sherlock is actually a girl's name."

You feel like a fucking coward. The loathing is overwhelming.

He laughs. He's lovely.

You smile and for a tender, shivering moment, the two of you are connected by some unseen force. You are [fearlessly] in love. Then the moment snaps like the fragile silk of a spider's thread and you look away, reluctant.

The truth, apparently, is destined to remain in the ebony box.

...

But while in flight you receive a phone call from your brother, something about Moriarty and another return from the dead and turn the goddamn plane around_, _and fuck, _oh_, you think of John, think of kissing him.

...

This time, you do.

...

_Reviews are much appreciated, my dears._


End file.
